We Come To Love
by Jayne Foyer
Summary: A series of short drabbles dedicated to Hiromu Arakawa. Thank you for Fullmetal Alchemist. Thank you for showing us what love is.
1. A Father's Plan

**We Come To Love  
****a series of Fullmetal Alchemist drabbles  
****dedicated to Hiromu Arakawa **

* * *

James Mustang had once had a plan for his life, but it had all been shot to hell years ago.

He had always been a gifted alchemist, and at eighteen years old he left his family, planning to travel to Central, become a State Alchemist and send money back home until they could join him in the city and live in grand old mansions and never have to worry about being hungry ever again.

A few things happened in rapid succession. Upon his arrival to Central, he was mugged, and then six months later he failed the State Alchemy Exam, and then two days after that, he fell in love, and that's where things really fell apart. She had black hair and black eyes, and her parents must have been Xingese but she spoke without an accent, and knew the layout of Central better than he did. He bought her dinner with what little money he had left, and a year later there was a baby on the way, so they decided to get married. Her parents took pity on them and gave them just enough money to get by and so they bought a respectable home in the respectable part of town and decided that they were going to raise their son to be a real gentleman, and to hell with everyone else. James's younger sister came to Central when the baby was born and she stayed with them for a while, then she left to get her own cheap, greasy apartment, and she worked at a bar that she later came to own.

Roy Mustang resembled his mother more than his father, with straight black hair and eyes almost as dark as his mother's. James Mustang didn't mind, because this little boy was his little boy, and as he said his first word and took his first steps, James began to remember that he once had a plan for his own life, and suddenly he had a plan for his son's life, and it was almost identical to his own.

They were poorer than many of their neighbors but even as a child they never let their son know this. James searched for an alchemy teacher, because he was too busy with his second job to teach his son, and his sister who looked after Roy when his parents were at work didn't know any alchemy. Every teacher was too expensive, though. Every teacher but one.

"My husband would love to do it," said a blonde-haired woman to James and his wife. "Money is a nonissue, we require very little to get by. When your boy's old enough, of course, I would love for him to study with us." She paused, smiled at them. "My daughter, you know, is just a year younger than your boy, but she doesn't talk yet." Her smile faltered slightly. "She just needs someone her own age, that's what I keep telling Berthold. Maybe you can help us."

"We'd love to," said James, squeezing his wife's hand, and the blonde-haired woman stood up to leave but she never got the chance, because living in the respectable part of town, people always thought you were richer than you actually were, and two men with guns were suddenly in the house, barrels pointed at the three of them, while another two searched the house. As they left, they shot the blonde-haired woman in the head, and then James's wife in the eye and then they shot James in the abdomen, and as he lay on his kitchen floor alone but for two corpses, he thought about how lucky it was that their beautiful little four-year-old boy was spending tonight at his Auntie's new, small house, and he was also so jealous of his sister, because he had insisted on naming her godmother, and now she would watch his son grow up and graduate from school and become a State Alchemist and work for the good of the country and fall in love and get married, and James would never get the chance to see his little boy become a man.

James Mustang died with tears on his face.


	2. Wants

**We Come To Love  
****a series of Fullmetal Alchemist drabbles  
****dedicated to Hiromu Arakawa **

* * *

Berthold Hawkeye rarely left his study, but it was dark and he was hungry and many things were going through his mind, and he had to walk to clear his head. Perhaps he would talk to his daughter. Perhaps he would simply fetch some bread and go back to his desk to wallow in his own self-pity. He stopped with his hand on the door. He didn't want his daughter to see him like this. He shouldn't leave the safety of his study, where she wouldn't disturb him. He could never salvage the relationship he once had with his daughter, not after what he had done to her.

His student, the young and naïve Roy Mustang, had left not half an hour ago. Stupid boy. Mustang had pleaded one last time to be shown his master's alchemic secret, but of course Berthold had refused. He was just a child, barely a few years older than his own innocent, empty-headed daughter. Then, with a solemn goodbye, Mustang had left, pledging to his master that he would _do _something with his life, and prove that he was wrong to stay cooped up here with no one but a daughter who hates him. Stupid, stupid boy.

Thinking of this and not his daughter, he managed to open the door. For a moment as he stared straight ahead he saw nothing but emptiness, and he almost breathed a sigh of relief. Then he glanced around the room, and he realized that Roy Mustang hadn't yet left.

They were standing just before the door, arms wrapped around each other, sunken deeply into a kiss. For a moment, Berthold was too stunned to say anything, then, as that stupid boy's hand slid down her back, much too far down, an anger like he'd never felt lit in his belly. Before he could do anything, though, Riza must have opened her eyes and seen him, because she quickly pulled apart and pushed Mustang backwards. He stumbled slightly, looking confused, then he saw her father and immediately tried to explain. "Teacher," he said dumbly. "I-"

"No excuses," Berthold Hawkeye said lowly. "Get out of my house."

"I'm sorry, this is my fault, I-"

"Get," said the man lowly, dangerous, "out."

Mustang looked at Riza. He reached out and took her hand. She pulled her hand away, refusing to look at him. "Please go," she squeaked. Mustang looked outraged, he looked like he was going to stalk up to her father and punch him in the face, but instead he stood, collected himself, and nodded, and he left the house.

He stopped just outside the door, though. He stopped and he stood still, straining his ears to hear the noises coming from inside.

Muffled, her voice came first. "Don't be angry," she said. "We weren't doing anything bad, I swear."

A pause. Then, the older man continued. "As long as I live," he said softly, so softly Roy could barely hear, "he will never touch you like that under this roof."

"Then I'll leave," she replied bluntly. "I'll run away. I'll live with Roy, I'd live on the streets if I had to. I can't do this anymore."

Another pause. "Do what?" he asked gently, as if he didn't understand.

"_Live_ like this!" she screeched, and her voice cracked. "I'm done with my schooling. You're done teaching him, there's nothing more for either of us to do, I'm just going to sit here and rot, alone with you. Don't you understand that that's not normal? No, of course you don't. I of all people know what sick things you consider _normal_." Her father was silent. Roy stood outside, frozen. What did she mean? "Please," she continued, her voice quieter. "Please. I want to leave."

He replied to her this time, angrily. "You're nineteen; you don't know what you want."

"Yes, I do!" she said. "I do know what I want and I want _him_. I just want to be with him, and not in the way that you planned. I don't want to be just something of _yours _anymore! I want my own life! I want to be an adult!"

"And so that's what you think being an adult is," said her father quickly. "Letting him fondle you like that?"

"He wasn't doing anything to me. I kissed him. I wanted him, I do want him, what don't you understand?" A pause, then the sound of footsteps. "I'm leaving. I swear to God, I'm leaving and I'm not coming back. I hope you're done with whatever the hell it is you're doing to me, because I'm gone. I don't want to see you ever again. I hate you. I really hate you."

More footsteps. Then, tiredly, his voice. "You're so like your mother."

The footsteps stop. "What does that mean?" she asked sharply. "What are you trying to say?"

Heavy, slow footsteps then the sound of a door closing. His study? Then there were her small, light footsteps. "Father," she called through the door. "Father, please open the door. I'm sorry. Tell me about my mother. Please, Dad, unlock the door. Dad, I just want to be with you. Please. Oh, God, Dad. Open the door."

And then the sound of her crying. Instinctively, Roy went for the doorknob and tried to open the door, but it was locked. Silently, he cursed, but he knew that she didn't want him there anyway. Feeling terrible, he left, disappearing into the night.

The single telephone in the Hawkeye household rang several days later, when Roy had built up the courage to do it. Riza picked it up quickly, before the rings could wake her father. "Hawkeye residence," she said quietly.

"Riza."

She almost gasped at the sound of his voice. "Mr. Mustang," she murmured, because she found it difficult to call him Roy unless he was right beside her. He must have known that much, because he didn't bother to correct her.

Instead, he went right out and said it. "Come live with me."

She was silent for a long time. Then, she asked, "What?"

"Leave your father's house," he continued. "I know you don't want to be there. And frankly I don't want you to be there either." He paused, then continued lowly, "He's too far gone, Riza. His mind isn't what it used to be. Don't worry, I can get him into a hospital somewhere, someplace where they'll treat him well. You just need to get out first."

A pause. Then, "What makes you say this?"

He hesitated, wary to admit that he had been eavesdropping. Finally, he confessed, "I overheard the argument you had with him. I can't stop worrying about you. Just get out, before he does something bad."

"Oh," she said. "He's already done that."

His heart seemed to catch in his throat. "What do you mean?" he asked. "Riza, please don't tell me…"

"Come and get me," she said softly. "I can't just leave. I need you to come and explain it to him and take me away. It'll break whatever he has left of a heart, and what kind of daughter would do that to her own father?"

He was silent for a moment, then said, "I'll come. I'll be there within the week. I promise I'll come, Riza, and I'll take you far away, to where he can't hurt you anymore."

He didn't know what he was talking about, and he was making wild guesses and leaping to a conclusion that he could only suspect, but when he said this something within her broke down and he heard her quiet sobs through the phone, and it was like she was confirming his worst fears.

"I'll be waiting," she managed to sniff, and then the line went dead.

He looked at the phone in his hands, then hung it up, then buried his head in his arms and finally accepted that equivalent exchange was a lie, because Riza Hawkeye's father had never given a thing to her, and yet he had damaged her in ways that Roy could even comprehend.

A few days later and Roy Mustang is once again standing in her father's house. Her father is barely making sense anymore; he talks as if he hadn't seen Roy kissing Riza, but there's that bitter smile and spiteful look in his eye, and Roy knows the cool hatred that the man feels. Despite all of this, all that he has done to his daughter and all that Roy doesn't know, Roy still feels some kind of affection for his teacher, like he is the father that died a long time ago.

His teacher says, "I died a long time ago," and then Roy thinks that maybe both his real father and this man, who had almost played the part so well, truly are dead. The man's eyes are blank and lonely. He coughs and out comes blood as well, and Roy suddenly realizes, in a panic, that his teacher's sickness is worse than he thought. Roy rushes forward, tries to help him, as his teacher whispers, "What a pity. I don't have enough time to teach you." More coughs, more blood. "But," he says, and his lungs are giving out. "My research," he says, and then he says, "My daughter," and for a second Roy doesn't understand, then his teacher continues, "She knows it all," and Roy's can't believe it.

And as the man continues talking, as he says in his low, gritty voice, "Roy…I'll leave my daughter to you…please…please…" Roy realizes that with his last, dying breaths, Riza's father is giving his blessing. He coughs again and panic kicks in and Roy starts to shout, because he knows that she is here. She looks at him, and the look in her eyes isn't hope and love, the look that she gave him when he walked through the door tonight. No, it's fear. Just pure, paralyzing fear.

And suddenly Roy is arranging his teacher's funeral, although it is barely more than he and Riza in attendance. And just as suddenly, they decide without any words that she doesn't have to move in with him, because she's free of her father's grasp now and she'll be alright. That's all she ever wanted, anyway. To be free.

And they don't kiss again. Not for a long time, not in her father's house. There is a pain in the pit of their stomach that neither one of them wants to face. That pain is unadulterated guilt and it eats away at them so badly that while they do spend long nights together, his fingers brushing against her back, they keep it simple and chaste. Studying. For his teacher, for her father. That's it.

Years later, regret is eating away at him too, but the guilt is still there, and so he decides to never let her go, not ever.

* * *

All of these are completely unrelated drabbles and will come to include other characters as well.

They're posted together because they're not really worthy of being a standalone fic.


	3. Ashes to Ashes

**We Come To Love  
****a series of Fullmetal Alchemist drabbles  
****dedicated to Hiromu Arakawa**

* * *

"It's unreal, to be standing at your grave. I'm staring at your day of death, only a few days ago. Or has it been a few weeks? I can't remember. Things have blurred together since I arrived in Central.

"Once, I started research into the forbidden, but you know that. Hell, I even had a theory on human transmutation. I told you I burned all of that research. That was a lie, and yesterday I dug the box full of notes out of my closet and I began rifling through, but when I pulled out the transmutation circle meant for bringing back the dead, I lost it. I dropped it into the pile and I started crying. It's still sinking in. At the office it felt like there was something missing, and it was only when I needed to discuss the latest case with someone that I realized it was you. Lieutenant Hawkeye looks at me with pity in her eyes. I wish she wouldn't.

"Anyway, here I am. Standing where you're buried. Even the thought feels like desecration. I didn't bring any flowers, because there's already so many. Purple and pink orchids, your wife and your daughter's favorite colors. Somehow, they look all too appropriate, sitting there in front of your tombstone. I wish you weren't dead. Gracia's been holding it together better than I thought possible. I've only gone around to see her once. I apologized to her, and she cried and told me that there was no need to say sorry. I don't think your little girl understands what's happened. All she did was cling to her mother, looking lost. They're both lost without you. So am I.

"I asked your wife if there was anything I could do for her. She said, 'Just please don't forget him,' and I didn't know what to say to that. How could I ever forget you, you bastard? You idiot, you damn Brigadier General. I would be bitter, if you were still alive.

"This would be easier to do if I knew who had killed you. Then I could get rid of them and feel like I was doing something, instead of standing here, talking to your grave. Oh, shit. I'm crying again. This is so masochistic of me. I don't know why I keep coming back here. It's not like you can hear me, is it? Can you hear me?

"Of course you can't. How stupid of me.

"As I was saying. That circle for human transmutation. I still haven't put it away. I probably should, considering how every time I look at it I really want to bring you back. But you'd just punch me in the face if I ever told that to you, so I won't do it. I promise. It seems easy enough to do, though. Maybe a life for a life would be enough, instead of just a couple limbs or a body. I've been trying to kill myself for a while now. This would probably be the best way.

"But who am I kidding? My life is in no way equal to yours. Hell, Maes, you have a family. You have a wife and daughter. Why the hell couldn't it have been somebody else, anybody else? Why couldn't it have been me? That would have made it easier on everyone. You'd still be here, and I'd be gone, like I'm too afraid to do already. I don't doubt you wouldn't miss me, but.

"But you don't think you're a god, like I do. You don't think you can manage the impossible. Damn. It's hard not to do it. I just wish you were back.

"I'm a scientist, you know. I know very well that wishing doesn't do anything, but lately that's all I've been doing. Ah. I don't want to come back here anymore. I don't know why I do. You don't mind if I stop visiting, right? What am I saying? Of course you don't mind. You're dead.

"Bye, Maes. I'll probably be back tomorrow. Like I've always said, I'm weak. Weak enough to come back and talk to this silent cemetery every day. God. I wish I could stop coming here. Maybe then I'd be able to say goodbye."

I start to turn and walk away. I stop and look at the grave again.

"I just wish I could spend one more day with you. There's a lot I should have said."

I do turn away this time. There's no one else in the graveyard as I walk past the tombstones and out onto the street. I walk home. I look at the transmutation circle sitting on my desk. I take it and rip it to pieces, and then I slip on my glove and I really do burn it all, all the research I had been looking at, all the potential ways that I could fix this. I burn it to ashes, then, angrily, I wipe them off the desk, the burning embers extinguished by my tears.

I don't go back to his grave for a long time.


	4. Beauty

**We Come To Love  
****a series of Fullmetal Alchemist drabbles  
****dedicated to Hiromu Arakawa**

* * *

The way he touched her, the way her body moved, their skin sliding across each other. The way his hand ran across her hair, her hair that had been cropped so short; the way the short hairs on her neck prickled his fingers when he wrapped his hand around her neck. The way her thin lips felt against his face, her hot mouth on his neck, her hands sweeping across his chest and his thighs, pressing against him. The way a shiver ran down his spine when her cold fingers touched his warm body. The way she sat on top of him and held his face and kissed him hard, and the way that he almost expected her to hold a gun up to his face, commanding him to do as she wished. The way that, just for a few hours, he would let her be in control, and the way that her body molded perfectly into his.

The way that sometimes they lay beside one another, completely clothed, silently staring into nothing. The way that he would rest his hands on her arm, which was splayed across his chest. The way they didn't even have to use words. The way that he turned his head and looked her in the eye and then he kissed her lips, even while she stared beyond him, a dead, empty look in her eye. The way that she would close her eyes and bury her face deeply into her shoulder, tears leaking down her face. The way he would turn his head away from her and let her cry, without saying a word. They way he always knew that she needed him to pretend he didn't see. The shame that they shared. The hate that had turned into a solid, physical mass inside of them, and the love that had made it all but disappear.

It was hard to love her because he once killed a woman her age, who looked like her, except the woman had had dark skin and red eyes. Every time he looked at her he saw this woman, and the guilt came again, and it consumed him, eating him from the inside out.

It was hard to love him because she didn't deserve him. She didn't deserve a lover or a friend or a superior officer like him because she wasn't the same girl he had fallen in love with. She did a stupid thing. She had thought that following him was the right choice. It hadn't been. But she had anyway, and that was her mistake and now she had to make up for that, and that is why she follows him. She follows him so maybe one day he will fall in love with the woman she has become, and not the little girl that had given him her everything. She was no longer a hopeful, scared, dreamy teenager who had lost her daddy and went crying to the only boy she knew. She still needs him. But for different reasons, now.

Sometimes, he goes home and he puts the barrel of a gun into his mouth. He sits there in his home, his finger on the trigger, his eyes closed. It tastes like steel and gunpowder. He sits there, letting it saturate his mouth. His tongue begins to feel numb. The metal becomes warm. He imagines himself snapping his fingers again, and destroying a race. He imagines a woman who looks like her, lying on the road, her blood and her insides spread out behind her like the wings of an angel. And then he imagines her face.

He imagines her face and he takes the gun out of his mouth and lays his head on the table numbly. He used to kiss that face. He used to run his hands across those cheeks and press his lips against that forehead. He wishes that he were dead. But she's still alive, and if she's still alive then that means she wants to live, and he's so tired, he wants her to make his decisions now. He just wants to do what she wants now.

The way that her mouth fits onto his. The way that the sun catches the gold in her hair when she's lying beside him in the mornings, his hands sliding across her body, seeing everything with his hands. The way that her breathing becomes quicker and the way that she says, "I love you," in the middle of the night, when she thinks he's asleep.

The way that he turns and presses his face into her chest and whispers nothing. The way that he trembles, clinging onto her. The way that she puts her arm around him as his back begins to shake, and the way that his quiet sobbing is barely audible in the pressing, accusing silence of the bedroom that held only one of them for far too long.

They way that they love each other is that the next morning, they call each other Colonel and Lieutenant and speak to each other no more than necessary, and they don't even look at each other. He used to look at her. He used to stare with open, honest eyes and undress her in his mind, admiring the dips and contours of her body. He never stares anymore.

And that's the way their love is beautiful.


	5. Belief

**We Come To Love  
a series of Fullmetal Alchemist drabbles  
dedicated to Hiromu Arakawa**

* * *

The room was silent, except for gentle scraping noises, the sounds of sharp metal instruments on flesh. She grimaced. Her father had thoroughly numbed the skin on her back with medication, but she couldn't ignore the noises, the sounds of his tools sliding underneath her skin, depositing ink there. The sound sent a shiver down her spine, but of course she knew she could not shiver, because it would destroy his entire life's work.

She said, "Father."

He stopped, looking at her face. She was lying on the bed, her cheek resting on the pillow. "Yes?" he asked, peering at her from above the thick eyeglasses he wore whenever he worked. "Do you need another shot?"

"No," she said. "I was just wondering..." she trailed off. Her father raised an eyebrow and she broke his gaze. She stared at her hand on the pillow and asked softly, "Is Roy ever coming back?"

Berthold Hawkeye looked at his daughter for a few moments, then he turned back to the bloody, inky mess that was her back. He pressed a damp cloth onto her skin, soaking up the crimson liquid and the excess ink.

He said, "I hope so, Riza." He dug the sharp blade into her skin, piercing and staining his daughter's virgin flesh.

"I hope so."


	6. I Am Not Yours

**We Come To Love  
****a series of Fullmetal Alchemist drabbles  
****dedicated to Hiromu Arakawa**

* * *

_I am not your justification for existence._

-Margaret Atwood, _The Handmaid's Tale_

She sat on the floor, clutching her knees into her chest, rocking back and forth. Tears leaked out of her eyes, slid down her cheeks and dripped past her chin to her collarbone, where they traced her bone and then fell down her bare chest, disappearing into the crevice between her breasts. She sat there on the floor, completely naked, every limb shaking, her heart pumping; she could hear her blood in her ears, coursing through her veins. She was hysterical.

She gasped and gulped air as if she could not breathe. As if her lungs could stop working at any moment. Every once in a while she breathed too deeply and she had to cough. Breathe in. Expel air like someone's hit you hard in the stomach. She'd never been hit like that. But she could imagine how it feels.

She breathed in too deeply and it clutched at her lungs and she fell apart, falling onto the cold, cold floor of her small, empty house. The house that she now lives in alone. She lay spread-eagle on this floor, her tears collecting underneath her face. She could only cry harder. Not because she's alone. Because she's had nearly twenty years in this house and not once has she ever cried. She's stayed silent because she didn't know when to cry because her father had never told her that crying was okay to do. Her father had never shown weakness. Her father had never shown that he cared for her. And it's useless to cry when no one cares. And when _he_ was here, she was always too afraid. Too afraid to burst into tears. Too afraid of scorn or rejection or maybe she was mostly afraid that he would hold her and kiss her and love her. He shouldn't love her.

So there she laid, unleashing twenty years of bitter, angry tears onto the cold ground. She didn't stop in one minute, nor ten nor twenty, and an hour later the tears had ceased, but she hadn't moved. Then she realized that she was lying on her stomach and her back was exposed and she quickly forced herself to turn over, to cover the ugly red lines under her skin. She curled up again, scratching with her fingernails at whatever she could reach of her back. She hated the thing. She was so ashamed of it. It was all she was; she was a container. She was a vessel. She was a blank page and the circle on her back was the information. She was an obedient daughter and the ink inscribed under her skin was her father. Her father. Her father. How she hated her father for doing this to her. How she had been so confused by that look in his eyes, that alarmed look that he had now and again, how she sometimes thought that was him realizing what he had done to her. How his sanity had disappeared years ago. How she had never cried in front of him, even as a child, when he dug his instruments deep into the skin of her back, painting his life's work onto his own child.

She spread out, pressing her back into the freezing floor. She flung her arms out on either side of her, staring at the ceiling. Her face was still wet with tears. She was cold. And she was uncomfortable. But most of all she was numb.

She opened her mouth. She forced herself to say, "I am not," but then she stopped because she couldn't continue.

Her face shivered, her throat begging her not to say it. Her whole body wanted to stay silent and wanted to go back to never crying and wait another twenty years before she cried again. Every part of her wanted to crawl into bed and call Roy Mustang and do what her father had instructed her to do for her whole life. All of her wanted to do this and never speak and never be more than a container. All of her did not want to find the real her because she was afraid it would disappoint and that she wouldn't do everything she was meant to do from the very beginning.

But something deep inside herself, something she could not define, forced herself to open her mouth one more time. "I am not," she said. Her body screamed in protest. Her head muddled her thoughts and she could barely make her tongue move enough to speak. The house was silent. Inside of her, a battle raged.

Her trembling lips moved, and she whispered, "_Yours._"

The battle silenced.

She closed her eyes against the tears that came like a flood and she said it again, and the truth resonated within her and the chains turned to dust and it was like a shining light appeared where her broken, frozen heart had been. She found the courage to speak the truth, and in return the truth had set her free.

"_I am not yours._"


	7. The Perfect End

**We Come To Love  
****a series of Fullmetal Alchemist drabbles  
****dedicated to Hiromu Arakawa**

* * *

"Oh," said Riza, something new creeping into her voice. "Oh. God."

"What?" asked Roy, alarmed. She had a hand on his back, holding him steady, and he was clinging to her, feeling vulnerable. "What is it?"

"It's Alphonse," she continued, and if Roy hadn't known better, he could have sworn he heard her voice trembling. "He's back. Edward got him back."

"But…how?" muttered Roy. "What did he give up?"

"I don't know," replied Riza. There was a crowd collecting around the two boys. "I can't tell. But it looks like…it looks like they've finally reached their goal."

They stood there, holding each other. Riza took a hand away from him to wipe her eyes. Roy pulled a little closer to her, and then turned and blindly leaned forward, his lips landing halfway on her nose.

"Sir," she said indignantly, "what are you-"

He tried again, hitting her chin this time.

"Where," the side of her face, "are," between her eyes, "your goddamn," the corner of her nose, "_lips_."

She pulled her head away from him. "Very romantic, Colonel."

"This moment is entirely ruined by my new handicap."

"Not entirely."

"Yes, it-"

She leaned forward and silenced him, placing her lips onto his. He relaxed, sinking into the kiss and the way they embraced each other became less out of necessity, and more because they wanted to hold one another close. They lingered in the kiss, unwillingly to pull apart and go back to reality.

Suddenly, a loud cheer rose up from the group crowded around Alphonse and Edward. Riza pulled away from Roy, but he didn't open his eyes, because the darkness was easier to bear when his eyes were closed.

"What are they yelling about?" he asked, tugging her closer to him, trying to show her that he didn't care about anyone else. He just wanted to kiss her.

"Well," she said, and she sounded different once again. "Well, sir, it looks like they're cheering for us."

Roy opened his eyes, his face completely blank for a moment. Then he grinned and said, "Might as well give them what they want."

One hand around her waist, the other on her back, he leaned forward; she helped him find her lips. She responded instantly when he tugged on her waist, and as she leaned back and just barely – just _barely_ – raised her foot an inch off the ground, he had to smile against his lips because he knew she must have been rolling her eyes.

But he didn't mind, because her arms were still wrapped around him, and that meant she still cared. And that made everything right.

* * *

"HEY, MUSTANG!" shouted Ed, cupping his hands around his mouth. "GET A ROOM!"

"Brother," said Al, frowning, "that's rude."

"_You're_ rude," retorted Ed. "Besides, I'm just kidding. Took them long enough."

"Yeah," replied Al, looking out to where Colonel Mustang and Lieutenant Hawkeye stood alone, sunken deeply into a kiss. He smiled, and then Ed reached down and helped his brother to his feet. The people around them, most still hollering in support of Roy and Riza, started cheering once again as Al managed to stand up. They both grinned. Roy took his mouth away from Riza's and buried his head in her shoulder. They held each other.

Al said, "It looks like this is the perfect end for everyone."


End file.
